Must-See Egypt Tourist Attractions: the Pyramids, the Great Sphinx, the Nile Cruise and More

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I just finished reading Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert. It’s a good book. It made me think about all sorts of things such as life, decisions, accomplishments, goals and values. Gilbert says humans are happier when they anticipate something than when they actually live it. This reminded me about my visit to the main Egypt tourist attractions. This is the story of the weirdest trips I’ve ever experienced and I’d be happy to know if it made you want to see the pyramids, the Sphinx, Luxor and all other places that made Egypt one of the top tourist destinations in the world. If you decide to give it a go, make sure you organize your Egypt visa online before departure.

How To Visit Egypt?

According to Daniel Gilbert, people are genuine when they remember their amazing travels. Does this mean our real experience doesn’t matter much in the big scheme of things? Once the vacation gone, are we still going to have great memories about it for the rest of our lives? Is this how our mind works? Do we really turn crap into gold with nothing else than our brain and a little time? How can you design the perfect Egypt itinerary that’s going to satisfy your desire to see all those wonders of this ancient land, full of cultural landmarks and magnificent landscapes?

Traveling through Egypt, I discovered that not all trips can make you happy. Please don’t get me wrong; the country is just awesome, my trip to Egypt was absolutely safe, and Egyptian tourist attractions are nothing short of amazing. I wish I had read an insider’s guide to travelling to Egypt before my trip, as it would have helped me enjoy my Egyptian adventure more.

I’d recommend a premium trip, if you don’t want to bother with organizing all transportation and visits by yourself. However, this is just me. You can simply book a flight to Cairo, find a hotel online and go. Then book some tours at your destination or rent a car and explore the country on your own.

My Egypt Travel Experience That Confirms Daniel Gilbert’s Theory

I would have expected memories of an event to be closer to what we actually lived than to what we anticipated. Funny enough, one of my travels is just in line with Gilbert’s reasoning. Several years ago, I visited Egypt, in what I used to call “a forgettable trip”. Everything seemed extremely bad: Cairo scared me, Luxor shocked me, my stomach did not agree with Egyptian food, the bus we spent so much time in was one of the least comfortable I’ve ever seen and the list could go on. When I returned, I wrote three long articles about my journey, articles full of details that made it such a bad experience, but also full of beautiful photos of the main Egypt tourist attractions. I published them on my travel blog. One of my readers left a comment which I still remember. She said it was odd that my “forgettable” trip produced a series of three detailed stories about Luxor, Karnak, the Temple of Hatshepsut, the Valley of the Kings and many other such historical sites in Egypt.

Must-see Egypt Tourist Attractions

The Pyramids, the Sphinx and the Giza Plateau

Apart from the pyramids, you’ll see camels on the Giza Plateau. They are available for ride, if you wish. However, some of them have a foul odor, so I don’t know if this is actually a good thing to do.

Those camels have pretty funny faces. Some of them were for hire. I heard this story that their owners would invite tourists to a camel back ride, then ask them for money to give order to the camel to kneel, so that the rider could descend. You’d better book an organized camel or horse riding tour around the pyramids like this one, here.

If you prefer someone else to take care of all the details of your visit to the Pyramids, you’ll need to join an organized tour. Here are a few ideas of tours you can take from Cairo:

The brief answer is that you’ll be sorry if you get to Giza and you don’t go inside one of the pyramids. Nonetheless, I was more impressed with the tombs in the Valley of the Kings.

I’m amused that I went inside the small pyramid, although after descending what seemed like a thousand steps, all that was at the end of the tunnel was an Egyptian dressed in a white robe, begging for money. The funniest of all was that we were not allowed to take our photo and video cameras inside, as if there was some ancient secret sheltered in there. I guess that’s a bit of marketing. It worked for me: if in the beginning I wasn’t sure I wanted to visit the pyramids inside, after I heard about the restrictions, my curiosity simply skyrocketed and I was happy to pay and eager to see what proved to be the void deep inside. Anyway, my experience dates back from the beginning of this millennium. For more actual information, you should read this guide to the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt. It contains way more tips to help you plan your trip to this magic land.

I went into the leftmost one. As I told you, cameras were not allowed inside, so this photo is a bit unrelated to the story.

Did you ever wonder how the Sphinx looks from behind? This photo is for you :). Some of the Egypt tourist attractions look funny from odd angles.

If you imagined you’d get on the Giza plateau and meditate in silence in front of those magnificent works of art, think again. This is how the atmosphere looks like nearby the Sphinx. The Pyramids were not any better.

Visiting the Sphinx will be hard on people suffering from agoraphobia or claustrophobia: here’s what you need to go through to get there

I smile when I remember what we used to call “Egyptian hours”: whenever we were told something was going to take two hours, it usually took about eight. You can imagine how much time we needed to visit all most important Egypt tourist attractions.

Visit the Coptic Quartier in Cairo

I skipped the visit to the National Museum of Cairo and went for a brief visit of the Coptic Quartier.This proved to be a great decision. We got there by taxi. Funny enough, the taxi driver took all six of us, even though his car had only four passenger seats.

Copts are Christians, they are the largest religious minority in Egypt and they still hold onto their values and beliefs to this day. Coptic Christians have their own community and church in Cairo (and in other cities as well). Walking on those streets was maybe the coolest experience of the entire trip.

Coptic Church in Cairo – this should be on the list of the best things to see in Egypt

It was interesting to see how street crossing can be a challenging experience. When the street is an eight-lane avenue, you can sweat by simply crossing it as much as you’d sweat if you played table tennis for two hours. There’s this saying which goes very well in here: “When in Rome, do like the Romans”. Got it? Egyptians are truly the street-crossing champions. Who cares about traffic lights? Negotiation is way more useful if you don’t want to get stuck on one side of the road for ever or until the last car passes, whichever comes first.

Cairo buildings may look strange to those who visit such countries for the first time. However, you’ll get used to them quickly, as they all have something that makes them attractive.

This little house has a special charm to it

Buildings on the road from Cairo to Giza

This is one of Cairo’s faces you don’t see too often on postcards

Hurghada, the Red Sea Resort Built for Leisure and Fun

It’s fun to think about the stay in Hurghada, in one of those all-inclusive resorts, where we had the surprise to see the first rain in the past five years (according to hotel staff).

This all-inclusive resort was pretty much like any other such resort in other countries. However, this is not Egypt. Egypt is what lies beyond these garden walls, beyond the most famous places to visit in Egypt, and that doesn’t look like comfort at all. The glass cylinder at the top of the tower is the disco 🙂

This is what you can find beyond those fancy, pink walls of all-inclusive hotels in Hurghada and in other resorts.

Here are some activities and tours to do during your stay in Hurghada:

– Snorkeling with the dolphins: click here to book this activity and to read reviews.

– Paradise Island full day trip with snorkeling and island tour: click here to read reviews and to book this tour.

– A 4 wheel drive desert safari with dinner and show: book it here, at the price of today, Sunday, September 15th 2019

– A full-day trip to Luxor and the Valley of the Kings. Check out this bus tour, as it might be exactly what you need.

The Valley of the Kings

I learned a lesson in the Valley of the Kings, which I thought was pretty cool: avoid organized trips like the plague, if you are still in power and you want to enjoy places at your own pace. I still wonder what those merchants with booths all around the Valley exit sold. Unfortunately, I had to run down from the top of the hill to meet our group which was about to leave. I probably didn’t miss much, touristy souvenirs were pretty much the same across all Egypt.

Souvenirs, anybody?

Do I look like Egyptians? Not quite. Something must have gone wrong 😉

It was impressive to see how much time it takes a convoy of about 50 buses to get moving, once it stopped for a break. It was surprising to see that even so, our bus managed to get lost from the convoy. It was hilarious to see a 40 people bus was guarded by one single soldier with a shotgun for about half of the desert crossing we’ve gone through to Luxor.

Luxor – the Town and the Temple

Luxor is awesome. Those pharaohs loved their huge pillars, obelisks and statues.

I loved the story about one of the pharaohs, who wanted to save some money from the national budget and had the name tags on the former pharaoh’s statues deleted and replaced with his name. How did historians catch him with the lie? He forgot to switch names on the statues of his wife.

Huge statues and pillars in Luxor and little Violeta standing next to them for comparison.

Good quality works are still there so many centuries after

The town of Luxor is nothing like the old temple once was. All that can be seen these days are run-down buildings, goats roaming freely on the streets, dirt, smells and poverty. Ah, I almost forgot the bazaar, the place where you could buy almost anything from batteries to papyrus presents.

Shopping area in Luxor

One of the thousands Papyrus Institutes in Egypt. This one was included in our tour, so we HAD TO visit it. Those paintings on papyrus are quite neat, but after you see how commercial the whole business is, you get a bit sick of them.

When nuts meet lemons

Nile Cruise

I took a four-day Nile cruise from Luxor to Aswan. I enjoyed it. The ship was old, but very well maintained, with polished wood everywhere, and with neat cabins with river view.

Click here to see details about this 5-day luxury Nile cruise which is very similar to the one I took. You’ll have four nights of accommodation with all meals included (except for the drinks). They take you from your hotel. If needed, they will assist you in buying train tickets for the return journey (should you want to return to Luxor by train). One big advantage of this Nile cruise is that it includes guided tours of Aswan, East and West banks of Luxor, and Kom Ombo and Edfu temples.

Fellucas on the Nile. Did you know that these traditional wooden boats are still used as a means of transport in Luxor and Asswan? They are also used for making tourists take some more money out of their pockets. The felluca ride on the Nile is enjoyable. For about 25-30 USD, you can spend an enjoyable hour on water.

This is how you make the felluca turn left or right

How’s your balance? Mine was rather poor, but luckily I got some help before falling into the Nile

It’s hilarious to stand on the Aswan dam and ask where the Aswan dam is. “You are standing on it”. Really? I had no idea!

Did I enjoy that trip? Probably yes, judging how excited I got while choosing photos for this article.

Would I ever go back to Egypt? Most probably no. I’ve got one of the most expensive Egypt tours, I’ve visited most of those amazing ancient temples and sites that are the most recommended places to visit in Egypt, and I’ve come back with cool photos. Yet, the discomfort is still here, after so much time.

Despite what Daniel Gilbert says, fear remains my dominant feeling towards this place. To this day I associate Cairo with dust, smells, noise and a feeling that you are permanently watched by millions of eyes, millions of hands waiting for the right moment to grab you and throw you in some dark tomb to never see daylight again. I have no clue why I got that feeling of chased rabbit. All people I got in contact with were nice and polite, nothing scary happened, but despite this, I didn’t feel welcome at all during the whole trip. That’s unforgettable.

I want to hear from you now. Did you read “Stumbling on Happiness”? Did you only have awesome trips in your life? How can you relate to memories of an event in your life being more highly evaluated than the event itself? Which of the main Egypt tourist attractions did you like most?

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Violeta writes for people who want to design, research and plan their own travel experiences. After two decades of working in advertising and marketing, she decided to pursue her two passions, to travel the world and to write about it. Since 2012, she authors and administrates a network of travel blogs.

I loved reading this! I read Stumbling on Happiness years ago so I have to admit I had forgotten most of it but it is just so true: I have been on many trips and even lived in many countries that just weren’t great: whether it was because I got really ill, felt unsafe, threatened even, or it just was so much less than what I expected. But, looking back I cherish all my international experiences so much! And in my mind, although I know it wasn’t all perfect, they were still great experiences… So much so that years later I might actually consider going back to those places “because of the experience” and also “because everyone else was so positive about this place” yet I know that when I am actually there again I will be disappointed again… our minds are fascinating!

First at all you took amazing pictures, so congrats for it! As you mentioned above “people are genuine when they remember their amazing travels”, this is absolutely true, I’d like to read this book as soon as possible! I usually stay safe during my trips ( I have been more than 25 countries already) but I couldn’t do nothing in front of a situation created in Ecuador when I have been robbed! If you are interested check it out on my blog utravelshare.com (destination Ecuador)! Thanks for sharing, you wrote helpful information, 😀